During the last twelve years he has made, with untiring energy, a tour
of all the Écoles Normales in France, returning several times to places
where he found signs of good vocal ability. In each school he made the
pupils sing his songs--in unison, or in two or three parts, sometimes
massing the boys' and girls' schools of one town together. His ambition
grew with his success; and to the folk-song melodies[245] he began
gradually to add pieces of classical music. And to impress the music
better on the singers he changed the existing words, and tried to find
others, which by their moral and poetic beauty more exactly translated
the musical feeling.[246]
[Footnote 245: Three series of these _Chants populaires pour les Écoles_
have already been published.]
[Footnote 246: I reserve my opinion, from an artist's point of view, on
this plagiarising of the words of songs. On principle I condemn it
absolutely. But, in this case, it is Hobson's choice. _Primum vivere,
deinde philosophari_. If our contemporary musicians really wished the
people to sing, they would have written songs for them; but they seem to
have no desire to achieve honour that way. So there is nothing else to
be done but to have recourse to the musicians of other days; and even
there the choice is very limited. For France formerly, like the France
of to-day, had very few musicians who had any understanding of a great
popular art. Berlioz came nearest to understanding the meaning of it;
and he is not yet public property, so his airs cannot be used. It is
curious, and rather sad, that out of eighty pieces chosen by M. Buchor
only nine of them are French; and this is reckoning the Italians, Lully
and Cherubini, as Frenchmen. M. Buchor has had to go to German classical
musicians almost entirely, and, generally speaking, his choice has been
a happy one. With a sure instinct he has given the preference to popular
geniuses like Händel and Beethoven. We may ask why he did not keep their
words; but we must remember that at any rate they had to be translated;
and though it may seem rash to change the subject of a musical
masterpiece, it is certain that M. Buchor's clever adaptations have
resulted in driving the fine thoughts of Händel and Schubert and Mozart
and Beethoven into the memories of the French people, and making them
part of their lives. Had they heard the same music at a concert they
would probably not have been very much moved. And that makes M. Buchor
in the right. Let the French people enrich themselves with the musical
treasures of Germany until the time comes when they are able to create a
music of their own! This is a kind of peaceful conquest to which our art
is accustomed. "Now then, Frenchmen," as Du Bellay used to say, "walk
boldly up to that fine old Roman city, and decorate (as you have done
more than once) your temples and altars with its spoils." Besides, let
us remember that the German masters of the eighteenth century, whose
words M. Buchor has plagiarised, did not hesitate to plagiarise
themselves; and in turning the Berceuse of the _Oratorio de Noël_ into a
_Sainte famille humaine_, M. Buchor has respected the musical ideas of
Bach much more than Bach himself did when he turned it into a _Dialogue
between Hercules and Pleasure_.]
And at last he composed and grouped together twenty-four poems in his
_Poème de la Vie humaine_[247]--fine odes and songs, written for classic
airs and choruses, a vast repertory of the people's joys and sorrows,
fitting the momentous hours of family or public life. With a people that
has ancient musical traditions, as Germany has, music is the vehicle for
the words and impresses them in the heart; but in France's case it is
truer to say that the words have brought the music of Händel and
Beethoven into the hearts of French school-children. The great thing is
that the music has really got hold of them, and that now one may hear
the provincial Écoles Normales performing choruses from _Fidelio, The
Messiah_, Schumann's _Faust_, or Bach cantatas.[248] The honour of this
remarkable achievement, which no one could have believed possible twenty
years ago, belongs almost entirely to M. Maurice Buchor.[249]
[Footnote 247: The _Poème_ has been published in four parts:--I. _De la
naissance au mariage_ ("From Birth to Marriage"); II. _La Cité_ ("The
City"); III. _De l'age viril jusqu'à la mort_ ("From Manhood to Death");
IV. _L'Idéal_ ("Ideals"). 1900-1906.]
[Footnote 248: The last chorus of _Fidelio_ has been recently sung by
one hundred and seventy school-children at Douai; a grand chorus from
_The Messiah_ by the Écoles Normales of Angoulême and Valence; and the
great choral scene and the last part of Schumann's _Faust_ by the two
Écoles Normales of Limoges. At Valence, performances are given every
year in the theatre there before an audience of between eight hundred
and a thousand teachers.
Outside the schools, especially in the North, a certain number of
teachers of both sexes have formed choral societies among work-girls and
co-operative societies, such as _La Fraternelle_ at Saint Quentin.
In a general way one may say that M. Maurice Buchor's campaign has
especially succeeded in departments like that of Aisne and Drôme, where
the ground has been prepared by the Academy Inspector. Unhappily in many
districts the movement receives a lively opposition from music-teachers,
who do not approve of this mnemotechnical way of learning poetry with
music, without any instruction in solfeggio or musical science. And it
is quite evident that this method would have its defects if it were a
question of training musicians. But it is really a matter of training
people who have some music in them; and so the musicians must not be too
fastidious. I hope that great musicians will one day spring from this
good ground--musicians more human than those of our own time, musicians
whose music will be rooted in their hearts and in their country.]
[Footnote 249: We must not forget M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, who was his
forerunner with his _Chants de Fontenoy_, collections of songs for the
Écoles Normales.]
M. Buchor's endeavours have been the most extensive and the most
fruitful, but he is not alone in individual effort. There was, twenty
years ago, in the suburbs of Paris and in the provinces, a large number
of well-meaning people who devoted themselves to the work of musical
education with sincerity and splendid enthusiasm. But their good works
were too isolated, and were swamped by the apathy of the people about
them; though sometimes they kindled little fires of love and
understanding in art, which only needed coaxing in order to burn
brightly; and even their less happy efforts generally succeeded in
lighting a few sparks, which were left smouldering in people's
hearts.[250]
At length, as a result of these individual efforts, the State began to
show an interest in this educational movement, although it had for so
long stood apart from it.[251] It discovered, in its turn, the
educational value of singing. A musical test was instituted at the
examination for the _Brevet supérieur_[252] which made the study of
solfeggio a more serious matter in the Écoles Normales. In 1903 an
endeavour was made to organise the teaching of music in the schools and
colleges in a more rational way.[253]
[Footnote 250: Mention must especially be made of little groups of young
students, pupils of the Universities or the larger schools, who are
devoting themselves at present to the moral and musical instruction of
the people. Such an effort, made more than a year ago at Vaugirard,
resulted in the _Manécanterie des petits chanteurs de la Croix de bois_,
a small choir of the children of the people, who in the poor parishes go
from one church to another singing Gregorian and Palestrinian music.]
[Footnote 251: It is hardly necessary to recall the unfortunate statute
of 15 March, 1850, which says: "Primary instruction _may_ comprise
singing."]
[Footnote 252: By the decree of 4 August, 1905. At the same time, a
programme and pedagogic instructions were issued. The importance of
musical dictation and the usefulness of the Galin methods for beginners
were urged. Let us hope that the State will decide officially to support
M. Buchor's endeavours, and that it will gradually introduce into
schools M. Jacques-Delacroze's methods of rhythmic gymnastics, which
have produced such astonishing results in Switzerland.]
[Footnote 253: M. Chaumié's suggestion. See the _Revue Musicale_, 15
July, 1903.]
In 1904, following the suggestions of M. Saint-Saëns and M.
Bourgault-Ducoudray, class-singing was incorporated with other subjects
in the programme of teaching,[254] and a free school of choral singing
was started in Paris under the honorary chairmanship of M. Henry Marcel,
director of the Beaux-Arts, and under the direction of M. Radiguer.
Quite lately a choral society for young school-girls has been formed,
with the Vice-Provost as president and a membership of from six to seven
hundred young girls, who since 1906 have given an annual concert under
the direction of M. Gabriel Pierné. And lastly, at the end of 1907, an
association of professors was started to undertake the teaching of music
in the institutions of public instruction; its chairman was the
Inspector-General, M. Gilles, and its honorary presidents were M. Liard
and M. Saint-Saëns. Its object is to aid the progress of musical
instruction by establishing a centre to promote friendly relations among
professors of music; by centralising their interests and studies; by
organising a circulating library of music and a periodical magazine in
which questions relating to music may be discussed; by establishing
communication between French professors and foreign professors; and by
seeking to bring together professors of music and professors in other
branches of public teaching.
[Footnote 254: _Revue Musicale_, December 15, 1903, and 1 and 15
January, 1904.]
All this is not much, and we are yet terribly behindhand, especially as
regards secondary teaching, which is considered less important than
primary teaching.[255] But we are scrambling out of an abyss of
ignorance, and it is something to have the desire to get out of it. We
must remember that Germany has not always been in its present plethoric
state of musical prosperity. The great choral societies only date from
the end of the eighteenth century. Germany in the time of Bach was
poor--if not poorer--in means for performing choral works than France
to-day. Bach's only executants were his pupils at the Thomasschule at
Leipzig, of which barely a score knew how to sing.[256] And now these
people gather together for the great _Männergesangsfeste_ (choral
festivals) and the _Musikfeste_ (music festivals) of Imperial Germany.
[Footnote 255: "In this," says M. Buchor, "as in many other things, the
children of the people set an example to the children of the middle
classes." That is true; but one must not blame the middle-class children
so much as those in authority, who, "in this, as in many other things,"
have not fulfilled their duties.]
[Footnote 256: _The Passion according to St. Matthew_ was given first of
all by two little choirs, consisting of from twelve to sixteen students,
including the soloists.]
Let us hope on and persevere. The main thing is that a start has been
made; the thing that remains is to have patience and--persistence.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF FRENCH MUSIC
We have seen how the musical education of France is going on in
theatres, in concerts, in schools, by lectures and by books; and the
Parisian's rather restless desire for knowledge seems to be satisfied
for the moment. The mind of Paris has made a journey--a hasty journey,
it is true through the music of other countries and other times,[257]
and is now becoming introspective. After a mad enthusiasm over
discoveries in strange lands, music and musical criticism have regained
their self-possession and their jealous love of independence. A very
decided reaction against foreign music has been shown since the time of
the Universal Exhibition of 1900. This movement is not unconnected,
consciously or unconsciously, with the nationalist train of thought,
which was stirred up in France, and especially in Paris, somewhere about
the same time. But it is also a natural development in the evolution of
music. French music felt new vigour springing up within her, and was
astonished at it; her days of preparation were over, and she aspired to
fly alone; and, in accordance with the eternal rule of history, the
first use she made of her newly-acquired strength was to defy her
teachers. And this revolt against foreign influences was directed--one
had expected it--against the strongest of the influences--the influence
of German music as personified by Wagner. Two discussions in magazines,
in 1903 and 1904, brought this state of mind curiously to light: one was
an enquiry held by M. Jacques Morland in the _Mercure de France_
(January, 1903) as to _The Influence of German Music in France_; and the
other was that of M. Paul Landormy in the _Revue Bleue_ (March and
April, 1904) as to _The Present Condition of French Music_. The first
was like a shout of deliverance, and was not without exaggeration and a
good deal of ingratitude; for it represented French musicians and
critics throwing off Wagner's influence because it had had its day; the
second set forth the theories of the new French school, and declared the
independence of that school.
[Footnote 257: It is hardly necessary to mention the curious attraction
that some of our musicians are beginning to feel for the art of
civilisations that are quite opposed to those of the West. Slowly and
quietly the spirit of the Far East is insinuating itself into European
music.]
For several years the leader of the young school, M. Claude Debussy,
has, in his writings in the _Revue Blanche_ and _Gil Blas_, attacked
Wagnerian art. His personality is very French--capricious, poetic, and
_spirituelle_, full of lively intelligence, heedless, independent,
scattering new ideas, giving vent to paradoxical caprice, criticising
the opinions of centuries with the teasing impertinence of a little
street boy, attacking great heroes of music like Gluck, Wagner, and
Beethoven, upholding only Bach, Mozart, and Weber, and loudly professing
his preference for the old French masters of the eighteenth century. But
in spite of this he is bringing back to French music its true nature and
its forgotten ideals--its clearness, its elegant simplicity, its
naturalness, and especially its grace and plastic beauty. He wishes
music to free itself from all literary and philosophic pretensions,
which have burdened German music in the nineteenth century (and perhaps
have always done so); he wishes music to get away from the rhetoric
which has been handed down to us through the centuries, from its heavy
construction and precise orderliness, from its harmonic and rhythmic
formulas, and the exercises of oratorical embroidery. He wishes that
all about it shall be painting and poetry; that it shall explain its
true feeling in a clear and direct way; and that melody, harmony, and
rhythm shall develop broadly along the lines of inner laws, and not
after the pretended laws of some intellectual arrangement. And he
himself preaches by example in his _Pelléas et Mélisande_, and breaks
with all the principles of the Bayreuth drama, and gives us the model of
the new art of his dreams. And on all sides discerning and well-informed
critics, such as M. Pierre Lalo of _Le Temps_, M. Louis Laloy of the
_Revue Musicale_ and the _Mercure Musicale_, and M. Marnold of _Le
Mercure de France_, have championed his doctrines and his art. Even the
_Schola Cantorum_, whose eclectic and archaic spirit is very different
from that of Debussy, seemed at first to be drawn into the same current
of thought; and this school which had so helped to propagate the foreign
influences of the past, did not seem to be quite insensible to the
nationalistic preoccupation of the last few years. So the _Schola_
devoted itself more and more--as was moreover its right and duty--to the
French music of the past, and filled its concert programmes with French
works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--with Marc Antoine
Charpentier, Du Mont, Leclair, Clérambault, Couperin, and the French
primitive composers for the organ, the harpsichord, and the violin; and
with the works of dramatic composers, especially of the great Rameau,
who, after a period of complete oblivion, suddenly benefited by this
excessive reaction, to the detriment of Gluck, whom the young critics,
following M. Debussy's example, severely abused.[258] There was even a
moment when the _Schola_ took a decided share in the battle, and,
through M. Charles Bordes, issued a manifesto--_Credo_, as they called
it--about a new art founded on the ancient traditions of French music:
"We wish to have free speech in music--a sustained recitative,
infinite variety, and, in short, complete liberty in musical
utterance. We wish for the triumph of natural music, so that it
shall be as free and full of movement as speech, and as plastic and
rhythmic as a classical dance."
It was open war against the metrical art of the last three centuries, in
the name of national tradition (more or less freely interpreted), of
folk-song, and of Gregorian chant. And "the constant and avowed purpose
of all this campaign was the triumph of French music, and its
cult."[259]
[Footnote 258: There is no need to say that Rameau's genius justified
all this enthusiasm; but one cannot help believing that it was aroused,
not so much on account of his musical genius as on account of his
supposed championship of the French music of the past against foreign
art; though that art was well adapted to the laws of French opera, as we
may see for ourselves in Gluck's case.]
[Footnote 259: _La Tribune de Saint-Gervais_, September, 1903.]
This manifesto reflects in its own way the spirit of Debussy and his
untrammelled musical impressionism; and though it shows a good deal of
naïveté and some intolerance, there was in it a strength of youthful
enthusiasm that accorded with the great hopes of the time, and foretold
glorious days to come and a splendid harvest of music.
Not many years have passed since then; yet the sky is already a little
clouded, the light not quite so bright. Hope has not failed; but it has
not been fulfilled. France is waiting, and is getting a little
impatient. But the impatience is unnecessary; for to found an art we
must bring time to our aid; art must ripen tranquilly. Yet tranquillity
is what is most lacking in Parisian art. The artists, instead of working
steadily at their own tasks and uniting in a common aim, are given up to
sterile disputes. The young French school hardly exists any longer, as
it has now split up into two or three parties. To a fight against
foreign art has succeeded a fight among themselves: it is the
deep-rooted evil of the country, this vain expenditure of force. And
most curious of all is the fact that the quarrel is not between the
conservatives and the progressives in music, but between the two most
advanced sections: the _Schola_ on the one hand, who, should it gain the
victory, would through its dogmas and traditions inevitably develop the
airs of a little academy; and, on the other hand, the independent party,
whose most important representative is M. Debussy. It is not for us to
enter into the quarrel; we would only suggest to the parties in question
that if any profit is to result from their misunderstanding, it will be
derived by a third party--the party in favour of routine, the party that
has never lost favour with the great theatre-going public,--a party
that will soon make good the place it has lost if those who aim at
defending art set about fighting one another. Victory has been
proclaimed too soon; for whatever the optimistic representatives of the
young school may say, victory has not yet been gained; and it will not
be gained for some time yet--not until public taste is changed, not
while the nation lacks musical education, nor until the cultured few are
united to the people, through whom their thoughts shall be preserved.
For not only--with a few rare and generous exceptions--do the more
aristocratic sections of society ignore the education of the people, but
they ignore the very existence of the people's soul. Here and there, a
composer--such as Bizet and M. Saint-Saëns, or M. d'Indy and his
disciples--will build up symphonies and rhapsodies and very difficult
pieces for the piano on the popular airs of Auvergne, Provence, or the
Cevennes; but that is only a whim of theirs, a little ingenious pastime
for clever artists, such as the Flemish masters of the fifteenth century
indulged in when they decorated popular airs with polyphonic
elaborations. In spite of the advance of the democratic spirit, musical
art--or at least all that counts in musical art--has never been more
aristocratic than it is to-day. Probably the phenomenon is not peculiar
to music, and shows itself more or less in other arts; but in no other
art is it so dangerous, for no other has roots less firmly fixed in the
soil of France. And it is no consolation to tell oneself that this is
according to the great French traditions, which have nearly always been
aristocratic. Traditions, great and small, are menaced to-day; the axe
is ready for them. Whoever wishes to live must adapt himself to the new
conditions of life. The future of art is at stake. To continue as we are
doing is not only to weaken music by condemning it to live in unhealthy
conditions, but also to risk its disappearing sooner or later under the
rising flood of popular misconceptions of music. Let us take warning by
the fact that we have already had to defend music[260] when it was
attacked at some of the parliamentary assemblies; and let us remember
the pitifulness of the defence. We must not let the day come when a
famous speech will be repeated with a slight alteration--"The Republic
has no need of musicians."
[Footnote 260: At any rate, certain forms of music--the highest. See the
discussions at the Chambre des Députés on the budget of the Beaux-Arts
in February, 1906; and the speeches of MM. Théodore Denis, Beauquier,
and Dujardin-Beaumetz, on Religious Music, the Niedermeyer School, and
the civic value of the organ.]
It is the historian's duty to point out the dangers of the present hour,
and to remind the French musicians who have been satisfied with their
first victory that the future is anything but sure, and that we must
never disarm while we have a common enemy before us, an enemy especially
dangerous in a democracy--mediocrity.